gayannabeth

  Discussion of dysphoria, depression, and dissociation.

  [colpse]

  I would like to say I managed to finish all of my homework that afternoon, but that would be a total lie. I opened up Chrome and navigated to YouTube, putting on some random video that I completely ignored in favour of pying shitty mobile games on my phone.

  Why I was doing that instead of what I actually wanted to do – continuing to py the magic video game – I didn’t know, but sometimes my brain just did that. I couldn’t expin it, but it was like things that I needed to do or wanted to do were impossible, and all my brain could manage was ignoring a YouTube video and an auto-runner.

  Eventually, after noticing the video had ended, I forced myself to put my fucking phone down already and actually open Steam and start the game I actually wanted to be pying.

  As a cutscene depicting an intimate moment between Lillith and Amethyst pyed (the game was eighteen plus after all), it suddenly struck me — I was starting to look like my own pyer character. I mean, she already kind of looked like me in the way a sister might look a bit like her brother, but now…

  I opened up the camera app on my phone to compare.

  That confirmed it. Minus some piercings, my face looked practically identical to the girl in the game. It was a little bit freaky, actually.

  Not that I minded it, really. I looked pretty! So pretty, in fact, that I got very thoroughly distracted staring at the image on my phone, in awe at that… Well, at that girl staring back at me who was… me!

  A part of me was tempted to complete the look. I could get all those piercings. On Tuesday, that is. Most pces did piercings for only twenty-five bucks on Tuesdays. On any other day they’d be much more expensive. I knew this for… reasons. I totally hadn’t previously looked into getting piercings for myself before. Totally not!

  So, I wasn’t just turning into a girl. I was turning into my video game character. I wondered if that’s what was happening to Rachel too. Just how cute was her pyer character and was she going to get even cuter?

  I didn’t mind that. Either me looking like Lillith or Rachel getting cuter. I’d be perfectly happy looking like a hot lesbian for the rest of my life. Don’t read too much into that.

  I stayed up too te. Again. Stupid past me.

  Olivia could tell. She just handed me an energy drink as she sat next to me, which I thanked her for. She’d given me a purple Monster. Pretty good. I started drinking it as the professor started the lecture, which I tried really hard to pay attention to, although it was pretty difficult.

  At the end of the lecture, the prof informed us that the next assignment was open, and that we needed to submit our topics before the Wednesday lecture.

  “You stay up te again, cutie?” Olivia asked as we packed up to leave the lecture.

  “What?” I said. Then I realised what she called me and blushed, looking away. “Maybe. The game’s fun, alright!”

  “Alright. But can you at least try to be well rested for our next presentation? Please?”

  I nodded. “Um, yeah, I should have finished the game by then.” I tried not to focus on the jumping jacks my stomach did at the thought of what ‘finishing the game’ entailed.

  “Ok, good,” Olivia said. “Wanna grab lunch with me, by the way?”

  “Huh?” I said. Lunch with Olivia? Why would she wanna grab lunch with me when she had such a cool group of friends?

  She gave me a shy smile. “Uh, it’s ok if you don’t want to, but-”

  “I do want to,” I said. “You’re, uh, really cool. Actually. Fun fact.”

  Was she blushing? Her cheeks were all pink and stuff. It wasn’t cold in here – quite the opposite, really. So she had to be blushing, right? Why on Earth was she blushing? Was it something I said? What could I have possibly said to make her blush? Am I overthinking this?

  “Oh, well, um, thanks,” Olivia said, breaking eye contact and looking across the hallway. I followed her gaze to find Hazel and Mark arguing, probably about the next presentation or something. As we watched, Mark left with a huff, stomping off. Hazel rolled her eyes, then she spotted us.

  “Hey girls,” she said, walking over to us. “What topic you think you’re gonna do for this presentation? I wanted to do the speedrun world record history of Lego Batman on the Nintendo DS, but Mark keeps insisting that it’s a me topic.”

  I blinked. “That is… oddly specific.”

  Hazel shrugged. “What can I say? I have my passions. So what are you two doing?”

  “Um…” I said, my brain drawing a bnk.

  “We, uh, haven’t decided yet,” Olivia said. She turned to look at me. “You have any ideas?”

  I got momentarily distracted by Olivia’s eye shadow — today a sparkly purple. It looked so good! I wanted to learn to do makeup like that for myse-

  Whoa, Lillith! Girl, you’re only pretending.

  …

  Well, I mean, learning makeup can’t hurt, can it?

  “Earth to L- um…”

  I frowned. “Huh?”

  “Do you, uh, have a name you’d rather I used instead?” Olivia asked, looking a bit embarrassed. I gnced over at Hazel, who looked like she was trying really hard not to ugh.

  “A name?” I asked, before wincing. That was stupid. I knew what she meant. It was obvious, really. I’d changed so much that she was probably assuming I was a trans girl like her and Hazel (who was extremely open about being a trans woman).

  “Um, uh, um, L- Lillith,” I said. “Uh, Lilly for short.” I suddenly lost the ability to make eye contact. “Oh, she/they, by the way,” I added, because it seemed like the thing to say.

  Hazel pumped her fist. “Fuck yes! Another she/they!”

  Olivia giggled. “Anyway, Lilly – cute name, by the way. Anyway, you joining me for lunch?”

  I heard a sharp intake of breath from Hazel. “Dang, Liv. That’s quick.”

  “It’s not like that!”

  “Suuuure it isn’t,” Hazel said smirking.

  Hold on…

  “Am I missing something?” I asked.

  Hazel burst out ughing. “Lilly. Sweetie. Girl. My friend. Hun. Liv is asking you out here.”

  I froze. There was no way. Liv was gay, right? She wouldn’t-

  No. Fuck! She would. For all she knows, I’m a trans girl just like her, which means that, yes, as a lesbian, I was actually someone she’d consider dating… what the hell. My life was nuts.

  I gnced over at my purple-haired friend and found she’d gone from pink to full on red.

  “That’s not- I’m not- She’s- I- Only if she wants!” Olivia excimed. She gnced at me, her eyes wide. “And, um, do you? Would you? Maybe? Um…”

  I tried to respond, but my vocal chords refused to cooperate. Eventually, I managed to shrug.

  Olivia frowned. “Um, you don’t know?”

  I nodded. I opened my mouth and found I could speak. “It’s just, uh… too soon? Maybe?” Did that make sense? I hoped that made sense. “I’ll, uh, join you for lunch, though.”

  Olivia nodded. “Ok.” She let out a breath. “Ok. That’s good. Great. Yeah. Lunch.”

  Lunch with Olivia wasn’t anything fancy, unlike when I grabbed dinner with Rachel over the weekend. The options on campuses were pretty much all chains, but there was a pretty decent Thai pce in York Lanes we ended up ordering from. We sat on the unbearably uncomfortable benches to eat.

  “So, uh, mind if I ask you a question?” I said.

  “Go ahead,” Olivia said. “As long as it’s nothing weird.”

  “Uh, define weird,” I replied.

  “Well, if you’re going to ask me if I’ve had ‘the surgery’ yet, then that would be fucking weird. Don’t do that. But, I will say, the answer to that is a no.”

  I blinked. “Um, that was definitely not what I was going to ask,” I replied. I tried to focus on the question I actually wanted to ask and not on the fact that Olivia had basically just told me she still had a dick. Why the fuck would she tell me that? It felt like oversharing, really. “No, uh, how did you, um, know? That you’re a girl, I mean.”

  Olivia sighed. “I get that question a lot from newly out girls,” she said after a few seconds. “And my answer is simply that, when I turned eighteen and graduated high school, I suddenly realised I could never picture any sort of life beyond that point. I mean, I could picture the general picture — go to university, get a job, get married, have kids. I mean, that all sounds fine on paper, but picturing myself going through that future as a man… it felt fake.

  “I drifted through my first year of uni in this dissociated state, which, it turns out, is not the best way to actually pass all your csses. Anyway, I met Hazel, who, at the time, was newly out, and, well, she basically gave me permission to think about my future with myself as being a woman instead. Not that one would actually need permission, I just felt like I did at the time.

  “So then, I started thinking about it, and… it felt like me, I guess. Like, I could actually picture myself doing all that as a woman. It didn’t feel as hopeless.”

  That was a lot to take in. I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting — certainly not the stereotype of ‘I pyed with Barbies all the time as a kid’ or whatever bullshit. What Olivia had said had sounded so… intense. No, not intense. It sounded deeper. Like this whole trans thing meant something to her.

  There was, of course, a reason I’d asked Olivia this. I wanted to know if her answer could help me find some way to help Rachel realise she was trans. After all, I couldn’t just tell her. Reddit told me that was bad!

  “Thanks for telling me, Olivia,” I said.

  “Call me Liv,” she replied. “All my friends do.”

  gayannabeth